Shovels and other devices which help people to relocate materials such as dirt, sand, gravel, snow, etc. are some of the earliest tools made by humans. In recent times, motorized and powered equipment has supplanted much of the work previously done by hand. However, there remain many jobs for which hand-powered tools are adequate, and indeed, sometimes preferable. For example, when moving less-dense materials such as snow, a well-employed shovel can be more efficient and require less time than powered equipment such as a snow blower. This is especially true when shoveling hard-surfaces such as walks and driveways. However, the manual efforts required to utilize a standard snow shovel can be too much for some, as evidenced by the large number of emergency room visits and deaths associated with such activity. Hence, there is a need for a manual-type shovel that requires less effort and provides quicker results than a traditional shovel.
A number of prior art devices have been developed previously in order to attempt to address this need. For example, wheeled push-shovels are known in the art and can be used to push snow from an area. These push-shovels are somewhat efficacious when the snow depth is shallow and the perimeter of the area that needs to be cleaned is clear of snow piles from previous snowfalls. However, when the perimeter is already filled with piles of snow, attempting to simply push more snow to the perimeter is not workable and the intrepid snow-shoveler must resort to lifting the new snow and tossing it on top of the old piles—effectively nullifying the advantages that wheeled push-shovels offer over more traditional snow shovels.
One prior art device has attempted to address this issue by offering a lever that allows the snow-shoveler to lift and move the snow using mechanical advantage. U.S. Pat. No. 7,654,592 to Stenzel discloses a wheeled snow shovel having a vertical lift and dump mechanism integrated into the shovel. This device is quite useful, but is relatively complex, expensive, and requires extra motions and effort on the part of the person operating the shovel. For example, once the user has gathered snow in the bucket and pushed it to the edge of a driveway, he or she must then operate a lever to lift the bucket and dump the snow. This extra step takes time and effort which can impede the quick clearing of snow from an area.
What is needed is a snow shovel that allows a shoveler to quickly and easily clear an area of snow while also automatically lifting and tossing gathered snow up and over previously piled snow.